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Mary Barton: A Tale of Manchester Life is the first novel by English author Elizabeth Gaskell, published in 1848. The story is set in the English city of Manchester between 1839 and 1842, and deals with the difficulties faced by the Victorian working class.

• Novel

								


Two hours before day-dawn he fell asleep.




CHAPTER XV.

A VIOLENT MEETING BETWEEN THE RIVALS.


   "What thoughtful heart can look into this gulf
   That darkly yawns 'twixt rich and poor,
   And not find food for saddest meditation!
   Can see, without a pang of keenest grief,
   Them fiercely battling (like some natural foes)
   Whom God had made, with help and sympathy,
   To stand as brothers, side by side, united!
   Where is the wisdom that shall bridge this gulf,
   And bind them once again in trust and love?"

   "LOVE-TRUTHS."


We must return to John Barton. Poor John! He never got over his
disappointing journey to London. The deep mortification he then
experienced (with, perhaps, as little selfishness for its cause as
mortification ever had) was of no temporary nature; indeed, few of
his feelings were.

Then came a long period of bodily privation; of daily hunger after
food; and though he tried to persuade himself he could bear want
himself with stoical indifference, and did care about it as little
as most men, yet the body took its revenge for its uneasy feelings.
The mind became soured and morose, and lost much of its equipoise.
It was no longer elastic, as in the days of youth, or in times of
comparative happiness; it ceased to hope. And it is hard to live on
when one can no longer hope.

The same state of feeling which John Barton entertained, if belonging
to one who had had leisure to think of such things, and physicians to
give names to them, would have been called monomania; so haunting, so
incessant, were the thoughts that pressed upon him. I have somewhere
read a forcibly described punishment among the Italians, worthy of a
Borgia. The supposed or real criminal was shut up in a room, supplied
with every convenience and luxury; and at first mourned little
over his imprisonment. But day by day he became aware that the
space between the walls of his apartment was narrowing, and then
he understood the end. Those painted walls would come into hideous
nearness, and at last crush the life out of him.

And so day by day, nearer and nearer, came the diseased thoughts of
John Barton. They excluded the light of heaven, the cheering sounds
of earth. They were preparing his death.

It is true, much of their morbid power might be ascribed to the use
of opium. But before you blame too harshly this use, or rather abuse,
try a hopeless life, with daily cravings of the body for food. Try,
not alone being without hope yourself, but seeing all around you
reduced to the same despair, arising from the same circumstances; all
around you telling (though they use no words or language), by their
looks and feeble actions, that they are suffering and sinking under
the pressure of want. Would you not be glad to forget life, and its
burdens? And opium gives forgetfulness for a time.

It is true they who thus purchase it pay dearly for their oblivion;
but can you expect the uneducated to count the cost of their whistle?
Poor wretches! They pay a heavy price. Days of oppressive weariness
and languor, whose realities have the feeble sickliness of dreams;
nights, whose dreams are fierce realities of agony; sinking health,
tottering frames, incipient madness, and worse, the consciousness
of incipient madness; this is the price of their whistle. But have
you taught them the science of consequences?

John Barton's overpowering thought, which was to work out his fate on
earth, was rich and poor; why are they so separate, so distinct, when
God has made them all? It is not His will, that their interests are
so far apart. Whose doing is it?

And so on into the problems and mysteries of life, until, bewildered
and lost, unhappy and suffering, the only feeling that remained clear
and undisturbed in the tumult of his heart, was hatred to the one
class and keen sympathy with the other.

But what availed his sympathy? No education had given him wisdom;
and without wisdom, even love, with all its effects, too often
works but harm. He acted to the best of his judgment, but it was a
widely-erring judgment.

The actions of the uneducated seem to me typified in those of
Frankenstein, that monster of many human qualities, ungifted with a
soul, a knowledge of the difference between good and evil.

The people rise up to life; they irritate us, they terrify us, and we
become their enemies. Then, in the sorrowful moment of our triumphant
power, their eyes gaze on us with a mute reproach. Why have we made
them what they are; a powerful monster, yet without the inner means
for peace and happiness?

John Barton became a Chartist, a Communist, all that is commonly
called wild and visionary. Ay! but being visionary is something. It
shows a soul, a being not altogether sensual; a creature who looks
forward for others, if not for himself.

And with all his weakness he had a sort of practical power, which
made him useful to the bodies of men to whom he belonged. He had a
ready kind of rough Lancashire eloquence, arising out of the fulness
of his heart, which was very stirring to men similarly circumstanced,
who liked to hear their feelings put into words. He had a pretty
clear head at times, for method and arrangement; a necessary talent
to large combinations of men. And what perhaps more than all made him
relied upon and valued, was the consciousness which every one who
came in contact with him felt, that he was actuated by no selfish
motives; that his class, his order, was what he stood by, not the
rights of his own paltry self. For even in great and noble men, as
soon as self comes into prominent existence, it becomes a mean and
paltry thing.

A little time before this, there had come one of those occasions for
deliberation among the employed, which deeply interested John Barton;
and the discussions concerning which had caused his frequent absence
from home of late.

I am not sure if I can express myself in the technical terms of
either masters or workmen, but I will try simply to state the case on
which the latter deliberated.

An order for coarse goods came in from a new foreign market. It was
a large order, giving employment to all the mills engaged in that
species of manufacture: but it was necessary to execute it speedily,
and at as low prices as possible, as the masters had reason to
believe a duplicate order had been sent to one of the continental
manufacturing towns, where there were no restrictions on food, no
taxes on building or machinery, and where consequently they dreaded
that the goods could be made at a much lower price than they could
afford them for; and that, by so acting and charging, the rival
manufacturers would obtain undivided possession of the market. It was
clearly their interest to buy cotton as cheaply, and to beat down
wages as low as possible. And in the long run the interests of the
workmen would have been thereby benefited. Distrust each other as
they may, the employers and the employed must rise or fall together.
There may be some difference as to chronology, none as to fact.
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